Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Saturn Imaging Session - May 6, 2013

With the sky condition looking good, I tried to image Saturn so I set up the Meade 8" f/10 SCT in our laundry area and let it cool down for more than 2.5 hours. I also get the chance to recollimate the scope after observing the image to be very soft past few days which ruin my attempts to try to image this planet. As I centered Saturn on the field of view of the scope, I notice the seeing condition is not very good despite a good transparency of around 3/5 . I nevertheless proceeded to image the ringed planet despite the poor seeing condition using a slow and old Philips Toucam 740K webcam with 2x barlow lens. I do hope in the future to be able to save up and get a faster professional webcam like DMK21 or Flea 3 to get better chance to capture Saturn and other planets as well.